Page 198 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 23 February 1994
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jobs in the restaurant industry if people shift from a high service content kind of industry to a low service content industry such as takeaway food. There is also the fact that only a few kilometres from here we have a major community, Queanbeyan, which has restaurants which will not be affected by these arrangements.
It is not just smokers who might be tempted to take up the option of choosing one of those four avenues to escape this kind of legislation. There are others who would make that choice. They are people who want to fraternise or associate, or members of the families of smokers who want to go with those people, to be with them in a social context, and who accept their strong wish to go somewhere where they can smoke.
The point I am making, Madam Speaker, is that there is an economic cost to this decision. It is not enough for the Minister to say, "Nobody is going to lose their job, nobody is going to lose any custom or patronage, nothing is going to change, everything is going to be hunky-dory". That might have been the case if there had been a considerable alienation or disenfranchisement of the adamantly non-smoking community from restaurants in this town. If there were no places they could go to I would accept the argument that their arrival in the restaurant industry would offset possibly the departure of smokers. But we all know that there are many places in the ACT at present where you can enjoy a completely non-smoking environment, and many others where the existing non-smoking areas are quite adequate and do not result in people having to inhale cigarette smoke. So that argument does not hold up.
Is the Government aware of this cost? I think the answer is yes. The reason I say that they are aware is the decision I believe to have been taken, but not announced by this Minister, to allow the ACT casino to continue to have smoking indefinitely. At present high-powered extraction systems are being built at the ACT casino in the knowledge that they will be able to use them and to continue to allow smoking patrons to smoke in their premises. That is an admission, if ever I saw it, that there is an economic cost to taking this decision. The Minister knows that he cannot possibly afford to drive away the many smoking patrons, particularly Asian smoking patrons, who go to that casino. He knows that the Government depends on that revenue and he knows that they cannot reverse that decision.
Mr Cornwell: So it is all right to do it then.
MR HUMPHRIES: The point is that if there is a cost in driving people away from the casino there must also be a cost potentially for other people not being able to patronise certain establishments. The fact is that no evidence has been put before us about the circumstances in which this might occur. We have had discussion already in this place, from Mr Moore and others, about the nature of extraction systems. I would like to know what the situation is with respect to extraction systems. I would like to know whether they are capable of delivering effectively smoke-free areas, even within the same room, to non-smokers. Mr Berry confidently asserts no, that it cannot happen; that it is impossible. I am afraid that I do not share Mr Berry's blind logic. I do not see the world in the black-and-white terms in which Mr Berry sees it.
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